hockey and piano: skill and expectations
One of the least likeable kids that LLB ever played with at hockey is on his spring team. Winning is everything to J., but unfortunately he's lazy and doesn't do the work to be a good player. So he cheats and cuts corners to win. Plus he has tantrums when he loses. He and LLB were neck and neck for skill when they started, but LLB pulled ahead and J ended up in the lowest tier.
The parents are nice people but enablers. They pulled J from the competitive league because, as they told everyone, "The evaluation process is unfair".
We ran into them at spring hockey last weekend. They told us that their kid had needed a break from "so many bad coaches". Even though LLB had the same coaches. Because we played on the same teams with them for the last three years before shutdown.
It's sad for J. that he's growing up believing that his failure is other people's fault. It makes him so powerless and fragile. He's not going to be successful at anything, and the family will only get increasingly angry at an "unfair" world.
It's not often you can look at a kid's future shitty life and pinpoint where everything started to go wrong for him, but this is one of those moments. "Right here, this is going to cause you problems forever, this moment where you believed that you deserved a top-tier life for bottom-tier work." It's classic white male privilege, which unfortunately for him is in its sunset years. J might squeak through as the last of the dinosaurs, but more likely will end up bitter and disenfranchised.
Anyway, he's on LLB's team in spring hockey. J got no goals in Sunday's game, but LLB got one.
I try to hide my glee when my kid outscores entitled bratty kids like J, but let's be honest here. I'm delighted.
Tomorrow is my student recital but my students aren't ready. Even my own kids aren't ready. It was always going to be a rush if we wanted to squeeze two in before June. So it was close to begin with and then we lost two weeks to spring break and illness.
Plus, after two years, I forgot how long it takes to for kids to learn their songs. And we had to start from scratch with recital etiquette so we lost a lot of lesson time there. Because of covid, most of my students have either never played an IRL recital before or were too young to remember. So I had to teach the recital etiquette as if they were all new. It takes time. Especially with ASD/ADHD kids who argue a lot. Which is most of my students. Five minutes on "Why you are not allowed to wear a hoodie to the recital". Seven minutes on "Why you need to bow". Seven minutes on how to actually bow. Four minutes on "Yes you need to be quiet in the audience even if your sister is playing". I couldn't make this shit up.
The point is we didn't have a lot of time for the actual songs, so they're a crap shoot. I'm choosing to think of this recital as a warmup for the June recital ha ha.
We had Bug's friend over yesterday to practice their duet together. The mom, who's my friend too, plays piano at a high level because HER mom was a piano teacher. A mean one. She said she used to leave her lessons in tears and she wasn't allowed to make mistakes in recitals. So every time her own kid makes a mistake now she makes an impatient noise and goes "You know better!" like it's volitional.
I feel so bad for her too. She's fighting her upbringing so hard for her own kid. She's negative and critical, but I know for sure she's relaxed her standards a million degrees from how her own mom raised her. I can only imagine her own hell as a little kid. It's so hard to turn your wiring around 180. And I think she's struggling to understand why I'm so relaxed as a piano teacher.
Even my own meddling in Bug's violin is limited to mild comments like "Clarity is a better goal than speed". And when she ignores me, which is most of the time, I get up and leave. It's incredibly hard to hear her wasting time practicing in a nonefficient way. But I do understand that constant nagging will wreck her big-picture love of the violin.
I want to tell the mom, as a mom-friend, to stop making comments about her kid's playing. Because she's killing her kid's love for piano. But it's a tricky thing to say. I did tell her to expect a lot of mistakes from everyone at the recital because it was such short notice and everyone is so new to recitals.
I bought a rose for every student yesterday. That might be my new recital tradition.
The parents are nice people but enablers. They pulled J from the competitive league because, as they told everyone, "The evaluation process is unfair".
We ran into them at spring hockey last weekend. They told us that their kid had needed a break from "so many bad coaches". Even though LLB had the same coaches. Because we played on the same teams with them for the last three years before shutdown.
It's sad for J. that he's growing up believing that his failure is other people's fault. It makes him so powerless and fragile. He's not going to be successful at anything, and the family will only get increasingly angry at an "unfair" world.
It's not often you can look at a kid's future shitty life and pinpoint where everything started to go wrong for him, but this is one of those moments. "Right here, this is going to cause you problems forever, this moment where you believed that you deserved a top-tier life for bottom-tier work." It's classic white male privilege, which unfortunately for him is in its sunset years. J might squeak through as the last of the dinosaurs, but more likely will end up bitter and disenfranchised.
Anyway, he's on LLB's team in spring hockey. J got no goals in Sunday's game, but LLB got one.
I try to hide my glee when my kid outscores entitled bratty kids like J, but let's be honest here. I'm delighted.
Tomorrow is my student recital but my students aren't ready. Even my own kids aren't ready. It was always going to be a rush if we wanted to squeeze two in before June. So it was close to begin with and then we lost two weeks to spring break and illness.
Plus, after two years, I forgot how long it takes to for kids to learn their songs. And we had to start from scratch with recital etiquette so we lost a lot of lesson time there. Because of covid, most of my students have either never played an IRL recital before or were too young to remember. So I had to teach the recital etiquette as if they were all new. It takes time. Especially with ASD/ADHD kids who argue a lot. Which is most of my students. Five minutes on "Why you are not allowed to wear a hoodie to the recital". Seven minutes on "Why you need to bow". Seven minutes on how to actually bow. Four minutes on "Yes you need to be quiet in the audience even if your sister is playing". I couldn't make this shit up.
The point is we didn't have a lot of time for the actual songs, so they're a crap shoot. I'm choosing to think of this recital as a warmup for the June recital ha ha.
We had Bug's friend over yesterday to practice their duet together. The mom, who's my friend too, plays piano at a high level because HER mom was a piano teacher. A mean one. She said she used to leave her lessons in tears and she wasn't allowed to make mistakes in recitals. So every time her own kid makes a mistake now she makes an impatient noise and goes "You know better!" like it's volitional.
I feel so bad for her too. She's fighting her upbringing so hard for her own kid. She's negative and critical, but I know for sure she's relaxed her standards a million degrees from how her own mom raised her. I can only imagine her own hell as a little kid. It's so hard to turn your wiring around 180. And I think she's struggling to understand why I'm so relaxed as a piano teacher.
Even my own meddling in Bug's violin is limited to mild comments like "Clarity is a better goal than speed". And when she ignores me, which is most of the time, I get up and leave. It's incredibly hard to hear her wasting time practicing in a nonefficient way. But I do understand that constant nagging will wreck her big-picture love of the violin.
I want to tell the mom, as a mom-friend, to stop making comments about her kid's playing. Because she's killing her kid's love for piano. But it's a tricky thing to say. I did tell her to expect a lot of mistakes from everyone at the recital because it was such short notice and everyone is so new to recitals.
I bought a rose for every student yesterday. That might be my new recital tradition.